The need to readily identify items stored in a computing environment such as a personal computer (PC) is dramatically increasing as more individuals utilize computers in their daily routines, and as the type of stored information varies between pictures, music, documents, etc. Documents and media are typically stored on computers in a hierarchical fashion and are organized with files of information or media stored within folders. File system browsers enable users to navigate through the file system and locate and open files and folders. For example, Microsoft Corporation's WINDOWS® EXPLORER™ is an operating system utility which enables users to browse the file system.
When browsing files on a system, some systems may display one or more properties or file attributes for a selected file. The WINDOWS® EXPLORER™ allows users to right-click a mouse button on a file icon, and view a pop-up dialog containing selected properties of the file. Properties may include file type, location, size and creation date, but are rather limited in scope. As computing systems become more and more sophisticated, more sophisticated properties and property presentation techniques will be desirable.
One type of more sophisticated property is the multi-value property. A multi-value property is a property that may have more than one value associated with it. For example, in the MICROSOFT OUTLOOK® email program, an email's addressee field (“To”) may have multiple addressees.
Users often have difficulty editing multi-value property fields. Some users have difficulty with the delimiters (such as semicolons) used to separate the multiple values in the displayed multi-value property fields. MICROSOFT OUTLOOKS® uses a semicolon to separate the multiple entries, and users often either fail to notice this delimiter, accidentally delete it, or accidentally insert too many delimiters, as they go about editing the “To” field for their email. Other users misspell entries in the multi-value fields, causing greater confusion down the road.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved way of handling the display of properties, and of managing multi-value properties, to simplify the user's experience in navigating and managing files on a computing system.